Lucy Liu highlights child trafficking

Hollywood actress, Lucy Liu fought back tear as she gave a passionate speech to raise awareness about global child trafficking. Charlie’s Angels star Ms Liu gave a talk at a symposium organized by the US Agency for International Developments about the estimated 1.2 million children who are trafficked worldwide every year. The internationally acclaimed actress became involved in campaigning to end child trafficking when she was made United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) Goodwill Ambassador in 2004. She also works with MTV on its End Exploitation and Trafficking campaign and has made a documentary film, ‘Red Light’, which focuses on the issue of trafficking in Cambodia. She spoke about girls’ experiences of being trafficked, both globally and in the United States. “With no options and not enough protection,” she said, “the world’s poorest children are being recruited more and more into a gruesome array of practices that include trafficking for sex, soldiering, begging, scavenging, working in factories and on farms, and domestic servitude.” 80,000 young women are sexually violated every day, she said, struggling with her words as she held back tears, US news agencies reported, Ms Liu called trafficking the "cannibalization of the planet's youth."

The most common form of human trafficking, she pointed out, is for sexual exploitation, whose victims are predominantly women and girls. Trafficking for forced labour is the next most common form. Other speakers at the trafficking symposium noted that statistics on trafficking are difficult to gather and often unreliable. Children trafficked into domestic work, for example, are hard to document because the work they do in private homes is often hidden from public view and unregulated.

UNICEF’s work to protect children from trafficking, commercial sexual exploitation and other forms of abuse focus on creating a ‘protective environment’ for them, a spokesperson said. “In such an environment, people at all levels of society work to enforce protective laws. They also educate children, educators and social service providers about how to prevent and respond to abuse, and challenge discrimination.” “I truly believe there is hope,” said Ms. Liu. “I believe this because of devoted workers and individuals around the world in organizations like UNICEF. "I think people will be shocked to find this is happening, I don't think they can comprehend it because it won't make any sense," said the actress. "You don't recognize that it is that there is a channel between poverty, trafficking and people will always take advantage of children when they can."

By Hayley Jarvis for SOS Children